June 23 - Day 80 - If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and as wealthy as its most deprived? Angelou

I was cycling home yesterday, when my chain fell off the front cog ! (you can see I’m not exactly sophisticated with my use of bike terminology). Anyway, when you are pedalling and nothing is happening, you realise quickly with cars behind you that something is wrong - correct terminology or not. The last time this happened to a bike I was riding, was I think when I was about 17 but luckily after stopping outside Millhouses Park and getting my hands completely covered in oil and muck, I managed to get it back on again. Despite scrubbing my hands and using ‘magic’ wipes, I still have remnants left on my fingers but at least it proves I’ll get my hands dirty - so to speak. In fact, anyone who knows me, knows that I quite like to get my hands dirty - either in the garden or with some other ‘project’.

Chains, as we know, are used in so many different metaphors and ideas (as with the title quote) and when I saw the cattle this morning walking across the moor, I was fascinated. They all followed a path in single file, as if linked by a chain, weaving in s shapes around grassy mounds for quite some distance. It wasn’t completely clear where they were heading, other than perhaps to the small brook, but it did make me question what authority the one at the front had or whether they were just following each other like sheep, despite there being a quicker route.

Anyway, as I set off again on the bike, leaving the cattle to do what cattle do (mainly it seems walking about munching grass), I was thinking about the times in life when we are led, have to lead or perhaps, more significantly, go on a different path of our own, without automatically following others. We all like to hope that we’ve left a good trail behind us, particularly when we try to follow our own and not that of the crowds. So I’ll end with a quote for us to think about from someone who certainly left a powerful trail that people could follow and created a very strong chain that wouldn’t break.

‘Good works are links that form a chain of love’ Mother Theresa

 ‘Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.’ R W Emerson